In 2019, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera “Les Indes galantes” was staged in Paris featuring young dancers with urban styles. A documentary by Philippe Bléziat, currently on screen, allows you to discover this creative work.
The improbable meeting between an opera by Rameau dating from 1735 and dancers of hip-hop, breakdance, krump, voguing or even flexing, such was the program of the opera-ballet “Les Indes galantes” presented at the Opéra Bastille, in Paris, in 2019. A meeting that ended with a standing ovation from the public, while the conservative press held its nose.
An ambitious project
Behind this meeting, a commission from the Opéra Bastille, which proposed to the director Clément Cogitore to dust off Rameau’s opera. To achieve this, he called on the choreographer Bintou Dembélé, one of the pioneers of hip-hop dance in France.
Their project is ambitious: to obtain an alchemy between urban cultures, baroque orchestra and opera singers. A long work filmed from the first rehearsal to the first performance by the documentary filmmaker Philippe Béziat to be seen at the moment in French-speaking cinemas.
>> To watch: the trailer for the documentary “Indies galantes”
A story brought up to date
The opera takes place in four tableaux, each telling a different story between Turkey, Peru, Persia and the Americas. All content with love stories. Thus, the good “savages” and the arrogant Westerners of 1735 are replaced by young people installed above a volcano, as if to affirm that the social situation in 2019 is explosive. “I would like this show to tell the tensions between bodies and groups, to go little by little until the explosion”, explains Clément Cogitore in the trailer for the documentary.
In interview for the Paris Operathe choreographer Bintou Dembélé emphasizes the harmony between lyrical singing and urban dance: “The dancers have a way of embodying the gesture through the voices of the soloists which has meant that an affinity is quickly created . It was interesting to see everyone’s desire to come together, to move around and mess everyone up on stage.”
Radio subject: Philippe Congiusti
Adaptation web: Myriam Semaani
“Indies galantes”, currently on view in French-speaking Switzerland